Melik Finkle (1885-1976) An American sculptor and artist born in Botosani Romania.

Born in 1885 in Botosania Romania, Melik began his apprenticeship as a sculptor with his grandfather Abraham Brownstein, the woodcarver. His father, David Finkle, was a cabinetmaker and builder. In 1900 his family moved to Bucharest and then later to London where at the age of 15 he had his own shop making carved furniture and picture frames in the Rococco and Art Nouveau styles.

In 1904 at age 19 Melik would emigrate to the U.S with his brother, working as a woodcarver, earning enough to support his parents arrival with an apartment in Brooklyn. His father created a large workshop in Brooklyn, where Melik worked. Their first commission was the manufacture of wooden handrails for the IRT subway. Commissions for wood paneled interiors and staircases for mansions in the city was a specialty and staple of the business.

In 1907 Melik moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to study sculpture at the Cincinnati Art Academy directed by sculptor Clement J. Barnhorn to whom Melik later became his assistant. Architectural studies were concurrently pursued at the Ohio Mechanics Institute. Work in Ohio included summers teaching garden sculpture at the Academy. At the Cincinnati Museum restoring plater casts, furniture and period rooms. Work for Rockwood Pottery. Commission work designing bookplates.

It was through this work that Melik's craft came to the attention of explorer and philanthropist Max C. Fleishchmann who commissioned him to design his book "After Big Game in Arctic and Tropic" published in 1909. Intaglio design in white and gold on a blue background grace the front and back covers, where realistic animal are combined with symbolic ethnic forms suggestive of hunting. The interior of the book features further artistic contributions.

In 1920 he left Cincinnati to live in New York City where he worked for the sculptors Henry Augustus Lukeman and A. A. Weinman.

In 1921 he left for Europe where on the advice of Frank Duveneck he studied at Academie Julien in Pairs. Moved to Munich and enrolled at Munich Academy where he shared a studio with the sculptor Hans Stangi. While in Munich he studied drawing with Hans Hoffman. Later in his life he referenced Hoffman as influencing him towards a new ways of understanding three dimensional space, depth and movement. While his sculptural work at the time was still representational of the human form, it became more stylized and less realistic.

In 1925 Melik returns to New York, rents a studio in Chelsea, 9th Ave and 23rd Street and resumes his association with Henry Augustus Lukeman. Melik becomes Lukeman's assistant on the Stone Mountain Project in Atlanta, Georgia. and was primarily responsible for design and execution of the sculpture, of which only a portion of the entire plan was executed. This would also included designs, built as models, for a lagoon and monumental temple at the base of the mountain park.

After the Stone Mountain projected suspended work in 1928, Melik began work with various Ohio pottery companies, until 1948. In this period he created the original carved models for some of the most beautiful examples of American pottery, complete dining ware collections. enjoyed my many: This included the "Washington Colonial" and "Grenada" designs for Canonsburg, "Provincial Ware" for Cooksville. "Geometric" for W.S. George and "Sheffield Ware" for Cleveland China Co. The stencils on such ware are not Melik's, but rather the unique carved designs that subtly graced the sets.

Melik Finkle's known works include "Head of an Old Man" exhibited at the Palace of the Legion of Honor at the 1929 World Fair in San Fransisco, A bas relief at the Sylvania, Ohio. Post Office entitled "Trilobites" for the WPA. Another WPA project was his architectural model of this Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon New Mexico displayed at the Brooklyn Museum. HIs model of the Hallifax Schooner is with the Smithsonian. Besides various commission work that kept him busy, of note was architectural models for the Philip Johnson between 1958-62. Also a number of fine art pieces are of note, outside of commission work, as art: "The Kentucky Mountaineer", "Blades of Grass" and "Head of a Child".

Melik loved his work, and never stopped exploring and playing in a number of mediums, including jewelry design in silver, bas reliefs, furniture, and later in life he a large number of abstract drawings for amusement.

Melik married Gladys Stark an immigrant from Galacia who grew up in New York City in 1933. In 1936, Robert Melik Finkle was born. Robert, an architect and artist, grew up in a studio setting, for home in NYC was also his father's studio with which life dedicated to working on art, creating things of craft and beauty, was and is the ethos of the family. This continues with Robert's present home and working studios at Anarkhia in Rochester, Vermont where from 1962 until his death Melik, enjoyed a country studio when he visited his son. Anarkhia presently houses The Melik Finkle Museum curated by Robert.

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